Right anterior temporal lobe atrophy and person-based semantic defect: A detailed case study

Thomas Busigny, Laurence Robaye, Laurence Dricot, Bruno Rossion
2009 Neurocase  
Neurocase Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713658146 NEUROCASE 2009, 15 (6), 485-508 We report a new case of a right temporal pole variant of frontotemporal dementia (Rtv-FTLD), MD, who presented a slowly progressive deterioration of the recognition of familiar and famous people. We thoroughly investigated MD's face processing and semantic abilities, including a neuroimaging investigation. This
more » ... nalysis revealed a cross-modal person-based deficit together with a more general semantic alteration. However, there was no evidence of impairment in face perception, including holistic processing, or of an abnormal pattern of brain activation in face-sensitive cortical areas. We discuss the nature of face processing in the Rtv-FTLD and the context of a person-based semantic defect. We are grateful to MD for her participation and her great patience during the experiments, to her husband and her family, and to all of our control participants. We also thank Dr Eric Mormont from the Cliniques Universitaires de Mont-Godinne for his collaboration, and Gwenaelle Feyers for having conducted the language assessment, Valerie Goffaux for the making of the stimuli used in the task testing perception of distances between face features, as well as two anonymous reviewers and the editor for precious comments on a previous version of this paper. This research was supported by the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS), mandat d'impulsion scientifique to BR.
doi:10.1080/13554790902971141 pmid:19568984 fatcat:u6evtyt4y5epza2s2bhbd4yiam